[lbo-talk] On Theorizing the Demand for Demands

[c b]

In other words the ideological foundation of both the SWP's
super-peaceful line and Weatherman's "Custeristic" line (iFred
Hampton's word term for them) was a profound distrust of the American
Working Class and overestimation of the cultural power of capitalism.
And a final point, if you read Lars Lih you will find a series of
Trotskyist leaders being quoted as seeing that the heart of Lenin's
"theory" was a profound distrust of Russian Woerkes. That is, the
Trotskyist tradition has more or less grounded its ultra-leftism in a
(false) description of Lenin and in a gross misreading of WITBD.

Incidentally, I picked up this definition of ultra-leftism or
left-opportunism from a pamphlet written by an Australian and
originally published by The Communist Party of Australia. It was
reprinted in the U.S. by the Communist Labor Party - it is a glossary
of Marxist terminology. I have it around the house someplace but it
got misplaced and I can't put my hands on it.

^^^^^
CB: "Ultra-left" or "phony-left" are contemporary synonyms for
"Leftwing Communism" from Lenin's _Leftwing Communism: an Infantile
Disorder_ .   Lenin may be having fun with the Freudian term
"infantile", fresh at that time. Lenin's book details the immature
thinking (refusal to compromise on non-principled questions, etc.) of
a number of "ultra-left" Communists in that period. Lenin also wrote a
lot about petit bourgeois revolutionism.